Katharine Kanter
Inscrit le: 19 Jan 2004
Messages: 1476
Localisation: Paris
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 Posté le: Lun Oct 31, 2005 6:42 pm Sujet du message: The Covent Garden Sylphide |
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It is quite a thrill to see and hear a piece with which one has some little familiarity, performed by another orchestra, on another stage, by a foreign troupe.
First, the orchestra. Although some will doubtless beg to disagree, I find Loevenskjold’s score a very fine piece of ballet music, an admirable expression of the choreographer’s innermost idea. Whereas the Danes’ orchestra is more like the Berlin in sound, with a vigorous double-bass and violoncello section, whereas the French like to hear the relationship between the woodwinds and the higher strings, the English ear tends towards a lighter string texture, the brasses being brought more strongly forward. This way of hearing, related, in part I suppose, to the language each country speaks, impels the conductor to underline varying dramatic moments; the tension will not be identical in occurrence, to what one would experience at Denmark. It is absolutely fascinating, and I would have liked to see the ballet several times more at Covent Garden, to register it more fully.
Secondly, M. Kobborg’s approach to the ballet. M. Kobborg is but 32 years of age, and this piece is not a divertissement. It is a tricky, elusive work for one's first attempt as maître de ballet. Nor is Covent Garden Little-Blitherington-on-Bloop.
M. Kobborg has shewn intelligence and sensitivity, in a production that most definitely does hold the boards.
If I had to choose between M. Huebbe’s new production at Copenhagen, where there is very little in the text that has been changed relative to Hans Brenaa’s production, and M. Kobborg’s, where cuts in the music have been opened, a somewhat iffy pas de six added in Act I, and a pas de deux in Act II, oddly enough I would prefer that of M. Kobborg.
Because he is not in a hurry.
He is not in a hurry with the mime. M. Kobborg has looked to it, that everyone on stage knows why and what, they are saying with those “funny gestures”. That said, the actual execution of the “funny gestures” leaves something to be desired. Dancers today have been brought up on the tacky, naturalist style of acting in cinema and television; they slump into a “couch potato” stance when not actually dancing, and carry that over to the mime. It is unclassical, lacking in beauty. However, make themselves understood, they do.
M. Kobborg has looked at the mime afresh, so, for example, in the final scene he has “spelled out” the mime of Anna, James’ mother, between grief over a lost son, and joy that Effie has found another. In M. Huebbe’s production, this “unimportant side aspect” did indeed get swept aside, along with much else.
The Covent Garden corps de ballet has shewn itself responsive to Kobborg’s instruction, and they work as a corps, not as a group of restive rivals. When they come out to celebrate James’ wedding, it IS a celebration, they ARE dancing for Effie and James. Or, darting in and out of the wings to tease James in Act II, the corps of Sylphs DO tease him, they do make eye contact, they reach out to him – “catch as catch can!”
However, there was no épaulement in the Scots reel. What is beautiful in the reel is, as the artists turn, to see the dissymmetric shift in the shoulder-line, leading the dance forward. Without épaulement, the energy is purely rhythmic, and thus one-dimensional.
(Incidentally, in Act One’s celebratory vein, were it not better to return to Bournonville’s original idea? That the two soli be danced, not by James and Gurn, but by the villagers as a gift to the bride? This not only affords a pair of lads in the corps a chance to do something, it prevents the soli from degenerating into the display of bravura dancing it has now become.)
During the weekend, there were theree casts on: Marquez/Samodurov, an un-announced appearance by Sarah Lamb (replacing Tamara Rojo) with Robert Pennefeather; and Cojocaru/Putrov.
Owing to back-to-back appointments on the Saturday afternoon, we were unable to see Miss Lamb, the pupil of Tatiana Legat. The news from those who did see all three casts, was that both as artist, and as technician, Miss Lamb resides in an elevated domain. They report a soft, unstrained neck and shoulder line, a powerful centre, deep épaulement, a firmly-held foot, extraordinary ballon and batterie, a soundless weightless jump.
The Marquez/Samodurov cast was most unremarkable, constrained both by technical obstacles, and a dry imagination. As for Cojocaru/Putrov, M. Putrov is an excellent dancer, his work is serious, thorough, very brilliant, and regrettably, still somewhat mechnical. Whether it were James, or the excellent Ivan Putrov, was at all times somewhat unclear. Watching these James over the last few years here at Paris and now at London, I believe it has been a mistake, that Emmanuel Thibault has not been asked to go down and dance this. The audience must see that these roles have meaning, it is poetry, and not just jumping around.
The lovely Cojocaru is seriously hampered by what Kiev technique has done to the body. Cojocaru is a sensitive, intelligent and charming young woman, but she cannot jump because the ligaments are used up and her hip joint is spoilt; she cannot move through a position because the body itself is so “deconstructed” that she lacks the control, and so remains with but one jeté; viz. the 180 degree splat, and two arabesques, viz., the 180 degree splat that everywhere now passes for arabesque penchée, and the “Photo Shot” splat. Her body and arms are all over the place, weakly, and the wrists broken. It is all very pretty, and certainly, Cojocaru is a loveable person, her mind and emotions are behind everything she does. But having the “right attitude” does not suffice to make a great classical art form.
The body must be strong, and firmly held, to do what Miss Lamb has amusingly called in a newspaper interview “holding the forms”, or what the Russians call plastique. The essence of classical dancing lies in the plastique. That is why it is marginally better to be strong, than to be flexible. For the public to understand what concepts the music would convey, the dancer must allow the public to retain in the mind, those eternal forms that emerge. The dance moves from and through one form to the next, but we must be strong, to hold the form. Otherwise, the dancer may see the concept in his mind, but it will never become intelligible to the public as an affect, as the shade or shadow of an idea.
We cannot allow huge forces to tear through the body, shaking us like a deer in the jaws of a lion, hyper-extending the wrists and elbows as though by whiplash injury. We must be on top of the forces we unleash, we cannot allow those forces to be on top of us.
On the Saturday, the role of Madge was taken by Sorella Engelund, a very detailed and refined interpretation that is best seen at fairly close range.
Perhaps this may sound odd, but I believe nonetheless that such roles - Carabosse, Madge, and so on, should be played by a man. It is not only the question of bodily size and strength in the supernatural being. The acting and dancing of the man will always have a greater intensity, it carries further, and it is not surrounded by a delicate aura. That is why Sheakespeare too is often better acted by all-male casts: the emotions are so vivid, so tumultuous, that one must have the voice and breath, the stamina and energy of a man, to carry it throughout the theatre and over an entire evening without becoming shrill or hoarse.
Finally, in composing his “Sylphide”, Bournonville penned a diatribe against the Romantic movement, that, like Beethoven and Schumann, he saw as a perverse egotistical excuse to wallow in one’s feelings, at the expense of responsibility whether that be political or personal. It is odd that, at counter-purpose to Bournonville’s explicit intent, the Covent Garden programme notes refer to this as a “Romantic” ballet. No, it is an anti-Romantic ballet, that uses the idiom and images from the Romantic era, the better to carry what would otherwise be a very unpalatable truth.
Dernière édition par Katharine Kanter le Lun Oct 31, 2005 6:55 pm; édité 1 fois |
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Katharine Kanter
Inscrit le: 19 Jan 2004
Messages: 1476
Localisation: Paris
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| Posté le: Mer Nov 02, 2005 9:55 am Sujet du message: En attendant |
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En attendant, voici la biographie officielle de Mlle. Lamb, du service de presse de Covent Garden.
SARAH LAMB First Soloist
Sarah Lamb is a native of Boston and trained at the Boston Ballet School with Tatiana Nicolaevna Legat from 1994-1998. She was awarded a Presidential Gold Medal and named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and was invited to perform for then-president Clinton at the Kennedy Centre in D.C. She won three silver medals: the Third International Ballet and Modern Dance Competition in Nagoya, Japan, 1999; the Sixth International Ballet Competition in NYC, 2000; and the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi in 2002.
She joined the Boston Ballet Company in 1998, was promoted to Soloist in 2001 and Principal in 2003. In Boston she has performed Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Lise in La Fille mal Gardée, Gamzatti in La Bayadère, Olga in Eugene Onegin, Myrtha and Peasant Pas de Deux in Giselle, Queen of the Dryads and Danseuse de Rue in Nureyev’s Don Quixote, The Sugar Plum Fairy, Dew Drop Fairy and Snow Queen in The Nutcracker and Princess Florine and the pas de trios in The Sleeping Beauty.
Her Balanchine repertoire includes leads in Ballo Della Regina and Stars and Stripes. Her contemporary roles include two world premieres by Jorma Elo, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, and David Dawson’s The Grey Area, among others.
Since Joining The Royal Ballet she has made her debut in Frederick Ashton’s Thaïs, the Winter and Summer Fairy in Cinderella, the centre woman in the Neapolitan dance in Ondine, Lady Mary Lygon in his Enigma Variations, the side couple in Symphonic Variations, Odette/Odile and the pas de trios in Anthony Dowell’s Swan Lake and the Fourth Movement in Balanchine’s Symphony in C.
During the 2005/06 Season she has made her debut as the Sylph in Johan Kobborg’s production of August Bournonville’s La Sylphide.
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